Turning Back the Pages

Gordon Smith of Riverside, while at work alone in the woods near that place on Jan. 30, 1913, broke his left leg and dragging the useless member, crawled half a mile over the rough and semi-frozen ground before he found help to assist him to his home. When rescued, he was nearly exhausted and had assistance been delayed a few hours he might have succumbed to the intense pain of his injury and weakness caused by his terrible struggle to get out of the woods.

Smith had been cutting wood when the accident occurred. He had just felled a tree and was trimming the limbs off from the underside when the tree turned over and dropped down striking his leg in its descent and breaking it above the knee. The desperate man called for help but there was no one to hear him in such a lonely spot. He braved the excruciating pain and started to crawl to the nearest road. After going about half a mile he attracted the attention of a passing teamster and was taken to his home.

A local physician advised that his condition was so serious that he be taken to the Albany Hospital and this was done the next day.

Looking death square in the face

Dennis Logans, the hustling proprietor of Warrensburgh’s smallest grocery store — located on upper Hudson St. — was nearly put out of business by a peculiar accident of which he was the victim. On Feb. 3, 1913 he had been downtown in the Lewisville (River St.) neighborhood on a bicycle and was crossing the Osborne Bridge on his return when his wheel struck a little hummock of ice on the bridge and he took a header, pitching head foremost under the railing on the lower side of the bridge.